Media systems are a well-known part of today's society. In fact, most people have at least one media system (e.g., audio system, video system, etc.) in their home or apartment. Restaurants, nightclubs, institutions (e.g., hospitals), and other larger facilities have even more comprehensive systems that can be used to play music, video, and/or broadcast messages.
Despite this widespread use, today's media systems do not adapt well to positional changes of the user. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The user is forced to go to the location where the media is being presented instead of the other way around. For example, if a user wants to listen to music, he or she must either go to a specified location where the music can be heard or predefine a new location (i.e., speaker location) where he or she would like the music to be heard. The same can be said for video, if the user wants to watch a particular video item, he or she must go to a specific location, typically the location of the video monitor, and select the video item. Now, it is true that present day media distribution systems do permit the user to predefine more than one location, which makes it possible to move between locations without significant interruption. However, even this flexibility is not without clear drawbacks. First, the user must still predefine where he or she wishes to receive the media, and second, the user can only be in one location at a time, meaning that the media is being distributed to a location where it is potentially unneeded, or worse, unwanted.
The inflexibility and inefficiencies of today's media distribution systems will persist without a mechanism to distribute media in a way that does not require users to follow the media from location to location.